


Unfinished Touch

by CoeurireDeux (Coeurire)



Category: Sunless Sea
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Gentleness, Hurt/Comfort, Muscles, Porn With Plot, Reader-Insert, Service Top, Slow Burn, Smut, Strap-Ons, Teasing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:02:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22335256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coeurire/pseuds/CoeurireDeux
Summary: When you rescue the Pirate-Poet this time, she's lost all her money and all her crew, and she's a long way from home. She comes aboard as crew, and you're filled with questions and desire.
Relationships: The Pirate Poet/Zee-Captain(s) (Sunless Sea)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24





	1. The Wreck of the Corvette

Yet again, she stands before you. You’ve danced this dance a hundred times before: water running down the cracks in her skin, she meets your eyes for only a moment as she reaches into her purse and pulls out the price of her lifeboat and her freedom from the authorities of London, or of the Khanate, or really anyone whose frigates have met an unfortunate fate at the hands of her ship. She does not let her fingers--thick, you remember, hard and unyielding but easily made slick--meet yours when she hands the money over. She might wink at you, once, almost dutifully, or give you a single wry smile, but her message is clear: you are rivals, nothing more. 

But this time is different. She’s warm and dry. Her eyes are downcast, and her hands make no movement to her waist. Around her broad shoulders one of your crew has wrapped a blanket from their berth. She’s shaking a little, like it’s difficult for her to stand, though she declined the chair you had offered her. And for the first time since that night in Gaider’s Mourn, your mouth agape and your hands leaving soft marks down the clay of her back, you break the silence between you.

You want to ask what she was doing so far from the Corsair’s Forest, what brought her to the waters of the Iron Republic. You want to ask what happened to her crew. You want to ask what kind of a ship it was that wouldn’t even try to bring her on board, whether she was awake before your zub found her by chance, drifting deep underwater, barely breathing before you took her in and pressed life into her lips. 

You want to ask why she doesn’t speak to you anymore. Who she’s taken as a lover since that night outside the Limpet. Why she’s never asked you to repeat that night. Whether she thinks of you on cold nights at zee, whether she touches the tattoo you gave her, whether she’s touched it up, added to it, whether she still sees your face flickering in and out of her dreams. 

You want to tell her, to ask her.

But you can’t.

Instead, you ask,“Bit of a rough night for a swim, isn’t it?”

Her lip twitches upward for just a moment, a hint of a smile that fades like jillyfish oil dissipating into water. “I suppose so,” she says evenly. “And yet.”

“And yet,” you agree, folding your arms. You’re playing the part of the stern, unfeeling captain. It’s the part she seems to like, and the one she’s most used to, and you’re hoping it will comfort her at a time such as this. 

Another pause. She’s gathering herself to give you the information she knows you won’t ask for. “Unfinished revolutionaries,” she says, finally. “Bastards. We weren’t nearly strong enough to take them, not with the very boards and lines of our ship in mutiny.” She swallows, hard, and if you didn’t know her better you’d swear she’s almost crying. “There wasn’t time to get the lifeboats.”

You inhale sharply. You know she’s lost crew before, developed the same captain’s detachment as you. You know she, like you, is able to braid zee-shells into a woman’s hair one day and watch her take a shotgun blast the next, hear about a man’s hopes and dreams and girl back home one night and hear the crunch as a monster snatches him from the deck in the morning, without going mad. But to lose an entire crew at once is different. It’s never happened to you, but you’ve heard tales, and can imagine exactly how it feels. No one to think of as you’re drifting off to sleep at night, telling yourself one had to die for the others to live. All those doors to knock on back home in London, all those spouses and children who would never see your their family whole again. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, and she waves her hand. 

“There’s another thing,” she says quietly, and gestures to the empty space on her hip. You realize with a jolt that this is the first time you’ve seen her without her purse.

“I’ve nothing to give you to let me go. And don’t,” she says, before the words can leave your lips, “even consider telling me I don’t need to give you anything. Even if it wouldn’t make your crew mutiny, I…” She spreads her arms wide. “I’ve no money, no crew, no remains of a ship, no lifeboat to… _ persuade _ unsuspecting travellers that I’m a poor hapless castaway.” She laughs mirthlessly, showing rows of clay teeth. 

“How much money does it normally take you to start over?” You’d never thought to ask, and she tells you. You’re sure she makes it back quickly--piracy is very profitable when it’s done right, when you’re in with the Mourn the way she is, unlike simple Londoners like you--but it’s not something you could spare out of the goodness of her heart.

“What…” Your voice is low. “What do you want? What do you need?”   
“What I need is a ship that could have carried me to the Republic.” She sounds bitter. “What I need is a crew. What I need is money. What I need is--” The Pirate-Poet looks at you, really looks at you, for what feels like the first time in months. “--a cabin to spend the night.” 

You lead her to your bed. You rub her back, and her skin is as supple as you remember. To your surprise, her fingers begin to roam over your body, lightly tracing paths down your stomach, your legs--

You take her hands in yours and hold them fast. She’s all you want, all you need, but you just can't; you fear it would feel like payment for your agreeing to take her in. She takes the rejection without comment, and when you let go of her hands, she opens an arm for you. You’re surprised at the gesture, but she’s warm and the way she holds you is gentle.

Tomorrow you'll sort out all the particulars of her stay aboard your ship: her rank (she's used to having none, you're surprised to learn; her crew makes decisions by consensus), when she'll be dropped off at Gaider's Mourn (in at least a few weeks' time; she'll need to earn some wages before she can get back on her feet).

But tonight, she's holding you tightly, and this time you know you're not imagining the saltwater on her cheek as it presses itself to yours. Your body is so on fire with desire, with the questions you want to ask her, that you think you'll never get to sleep, but exhaustion sets in and you nestle close to her and drift off. 

Tonight, you have only a few nightmares, and her face, limp and soggy in the depths of the Unterzee, fades in and out of all of them.


	2. Rough Waters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brawl. An argument. A consummation.

You’re up before a time that would once have been dawn to set zail from the Iron Republic; you’ve a few commissions to take care of in Port Carnelian. The crew rolls barrels of coke down the docks, and the Pirate-Poet shows the crew how many she can carry at a time, to hoots and hollers. You smile, happy to see her fitting in so easily. 

Your smile has faded by the time the shores of the Republic have receded into the inky blackness of the Neath. The Pirate-Poet intensely dislikes taking orders. She outright refuses to take her shift shoveling coke in the ship’s underbelly because your engineer looked at her with the wrong glint in his eye when giving the order. She gets into a fight with the navigator about the meaning of a certain set of false-stars. At the guns, she--the renowned fighter, the seasoned pirate--misses an easy shot at a jillyfleur, and you’re half sure she did it on purpose, half sure that something’s getting to her. You’re sure she misses her ship, her crew, her position of authority and the free time to compose, but that can’t be it, surely. 

Maybe part of it is the crew’s growing uneasiness about her. The starlit laughter from this morning had clearly been a fluke; overall, they haven’t warmed up to the thought of one of her kind aboard the ship. It’s ridiculous--your zailors have seen the things you’ve done, they’ve heard all about each other’s careers, and they’ve heard the way your Sigil-Ridden Navigator shrieks at night; they have every reason to be more afraid of their captain and of each other than of her. And yet. 

You overhear them swapping stories about the Unfinished Man you’d picked up on that run from Polythreme, the one who’d killed Snaggle-Tooth Zo. Several of them won’t go near her at all. One grizzled zailor corners you on the deck and pleads with you, as she’s standing not a hundred feet away, to throw her overboard. “An Unfinished Woman’s bad luck for a ship,” she pleads. “I’ve heard Stone hates the bloody things.” She points an accusatory finger. “She’d be better at the bottom of the zee.” You scream at her that you know the zee-gods better than anyone on board and that she’d better get back to work, and the whole ship goes silent and stares at you. You run a hand through your tangled hair and mumble something about “keeping you bastards in line,” but your outburst clearly hasn’t helped matters. 

It all comes to a head late in the day, when she walks by a table of drunken zailors and they start singing “The eight-legged whore from Polythreme” as loud as they can in her general direction. She draws her cutlass, they draw their swords, and before you can intervene she’s got one pinned to the deck by his jacket. Silence falls over your crew. You can hear the whooshing of the wind, the gentle shsh of the waves against the ship.

“Would you like to keep singing?” she growls, and the zailor responds by calling her names you hadn’t heard even in the roughest parts of the unter-unterzee. She raises her cutlass and looks like she’s about ready to damn well use it. 

“Hey!” you yell. She looks up and meets your narrowed eyes. 

She backs off, and turns to head abovedecks before you bark, “Captain’s cabin. Now, please.” You’ll have a... _ conversation  _ with the instigators when they’ve sobered up, but her you can talk to now.

You enter first, and half-expect her to slam the door of your cabin behind you, but she gently closes it. You sit behind your desk, but before you can open your mouth, she asks, “You’re really going to tell me I was in the wrong for defending myself? Against those bastards?” Her voice is cool, even.

“They are bastards,” you agree, “but you’re the captain of a ship, goddamnit. I expect this behavior from them, not from you. You can’t draw your cutlass every time someone tries to goad you into a fight!” 

“Good note, Captain,” she says, her voice still low and strange and sounding far away. “I’ll remember that for the future. Can I go now?” 

“No.”

“Well, what else is there to say?”

You stand up from your desk. “You were ready to--to kill a man a few moments ago!” Your voice is louder than you mean it to be. “And now you’re standing here acting like you were in some minor tiff? Which the gods know you’ve had more than enough of today, anyway. I mean--”   
She cuts you off. Her voice is louder now too. “Kill, nothing! I wanted to leave him a scar, something to make him think twice next time. YOU’RE a captain, and you always assume the worst of your crew?” 

Something about the way she calls herself “your crew”--is that all you are?--hurts you. “So you act up all day, you plan to mutilate my zailors, and then you give me lip?” you sneer. “Need I remind you I took you in? For, what, the tenth, hundredth time? I ought to--”

You hesitate, and she jumps in. “Ought to what, Captain? Throw me overboard? Gut me like a fish for all the damage I’ve done to your ship? Toss me some money and leave me in Port Carnelian?” 

“You’ve certainly given me options,” you growl.

She snorts. “You won’t do it, Cap’n,” she says. “If you did, I’d have nothing to lose, but you won’t. You’ve long known you and I are more than just rivals.” 

That catches you off guard, and you suck in your breath. “You feel it too?” 

She nods. “But I try to be careful. I may be a poet, but I have no misgivings about attachment. I could be dead tomorrow. You could be dead tomorrow.” Her voice gives away nothing. 

She’s right. You know it. You try not to do attachments out here, either. Even the affairs you’ve had with your officers have been strictly emotionless. You should go back to screaming at her for fighting with your crew, for being obstinate all day. You  _ should _ leave her in Port Carnelian, like she suggested. You should not learn anything more about her. You should not allow her to touch you again. 

Instead you both lean in, suddenly, as if you're worried you'll change your minds. You meet in the middle, your bodies two waves crashing in the middle of a storm, locking together. In contrast to her cool demeanor just seconds before, now she’s hungry: all roaming hands and thick, cut arms, as her tongue explores your mouth. 

“I’m still angry at you,” you breathe, pulling away for just a moment. 

“As am I,” she says, and her mouth is on yours before she’s done saying  _ I. _

You press yourself against her eagerly and kiss her like she’s freshwater and you’ve been lost at sea for months and months and months. Her arms easily grab yours, turn you around, and pin you to the wall. Your hands scrabble against her tattooed back. You kiss her and kiss her and kiss her and kiss her and kiss her, breathlessly, desperately. Her hands come to rest on your waist, and she kisses back. 

She pulls away to press her mouth to your ear and the nape of your neck, and you begin to moan in pleasure. Her lips, against your collarbone, curl into a smile, and she reaches down to slip a hand down your trousers. You’re slick with anticipation, and when she flicks one enormous finger against your clit you moan again, not caring that the whole bloody ship can probably hear you, and rake your fingers down her back. They don’t even leave the smallest mark--well made clay, she is--but you feel her shudder against you. 

“Carry me to bed,” you whisper, and the need in your voice is palpable. She obliges, hefting you into her arms, and you love the way they strain under your weight before she pushes you down against the bed and kneels over it. She picks up where you left off, again pressing kisses to your neck, your shoulder, your chest. Your trousers are down and she’s working at the buttons on your shirt. Her own falls easily over her head before she climbs into the berth with you; just like the last time, her trousers and cap remain on. 

Her hand returns between your legs, and begins to work slowly up and down across your clit, lazily, like she’s playing with it. You moan in frustration--of course she’s teasing you, of course she won’t let you just have anything easily--and pull her closer to you. Abruptly she takes your hand away, crackling laughter in your ear, and you’re about ready to draw your sword on her before she presses a single finger against your slit. A question. 

You answer it by thrusting your hips upward, and she’s inside you. Due to the size of her hands, her finger feels like two, maybe three. You gasp as her clay finger reaches deeper inside you, curls upward and pulls you toward her, moving gently but purposefully. She slides a second finger in and it’s almost too much but not quite, and you reach behind you to claw the dingy sheets of your berth. She thrusts again and again, filling you up, 

She slides her thumb against her clit with an expertly practiced rhythm, and even in the throes of pleasure you consider the other lovers she must have taken, clay and human and quite possibly Rubbery. Where did she take them? On Gaider’s Mourn, like you, feet scrabbling to get a hold on the cobblestones, back pressing into the wall? In her own berth, the sea rocking underneath her, with crew and passengers, the smell of the zee all around? Back home on Polythreme, clay meeting clay, hands pressing purposefully, needily into perfectly sculpted bodies?   
You’re moaning in time with her strokes, loud enough that you know your whole crew must hear you, but you don’t care. You hear a low moan answer yours, and open your eyes to see she’s touching herself, hands down the trousers that she’s still left on. She smells of salt and clay. You long to lean forward and taste, but that will come later. Right now, you’re on the brink, and watching her other hand move in desperate circles under her trousers is pushing you over. 

You come, calling her name, the one she whispered to you in a lifeboat once, long dark weeks ago.

She doesn’t stop touching you when she feels you shudder underneath her, just slows down, but you push your hand away, bring your face up to meet hers. It’s time to take care of her, now. She grins when she realizes what you’re after. 

“Not all my lovers reciprocate,” she explains, and obligingly lies down on the bed, hand still moving within her trousers. You pull them off, revealing loose spidersilk boxers--a smile creeps across your face, you’ll tease her about these later, when you’re not so busy--and then, that gorgeous mound of sculpted clay. It’s the first time you’ve seen her naked body fully in the light, you realize. Tattoos race along the curves of her, including down here, between her legs. You bring your face closer to read a snippet of verse: 

to love / with the same care / as a sculptor / as a marble statue / as the marble enveloping / the statue 

“You’re beautiful,” you tell her, awestruck. She throws a straw pillow at your head. “Fuck me,” she says, moving her hand aside. You replace it with your own, rubbing her clit, the size of a drowning-pearl, with two fingers. “Gods,” she groans, and places a verse-covered hand on your shoulders. You move down and begin to explore the folds between her legs with your tongue. She’s somehow both inhumanly hard and impossibly soft in your mouth, and you contemplate the contradiction as you wrap your lips around her labia and suck. She tastes like salt and clay and earth and strength, and wetness runs in rivulets down the inside of her thighs. You consume it in slow, calculated strokes of your tongue before pressing your tongue inside her, still working her clit. 

That does it. In a few moments she’s grabbing your hair and shoving your face into her, gasping and shaking. You wonder how much it takes for her to be this vulnerable. She shudders and moans and does not call your name because you’ve never told her what it is. 

When she’s finished, you clamber on top of her and hold her. “Gods, captain,” she says, and you can hear the smile in her voice. “That was good.”

“Entirely,” you say. 

“What happens now?”

You don’t have an answer, and she doesn’t press for one. You just keep holding her, tracing the tattoos on her chest. You read her poetry aloud, your voice growing fainter and fainter.

You’re not sure when you fall asleep, but by the time you wake up, you’re alone, the smell of earth still lingering in your cabin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I'm not sure how many chapters I'm planning--I have a vague outline but not much more--but I figure probably at least another two or three. Also, whoof, I'm so gay.


	3. Horizon Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tryst right on the deck of the ship. Another fight. You're getting into a rhythm, now. But how long can it last?

The crew don’t take well to your newfound companionship with the Pirate-Poet. They’re only slightly mollified by your easier demeanor and the smile you keep wiping off your face. Mostly, they keep muttering rumors about her, and you, that you catch the front and tail ends of as you enter and exit a room. The only bit of levity you get is when a patchy-bearded misfit mutters something he heard from an Italian  _ s _ ailor once about women on ships being bad luck, and you and your variously-gendered crew, including the Poet, laugh until your ribs ache. 

Even with that levity, things don’t get easier. It’s a few days to the southern coast still. You’ll have enough food to get by, as long as nothing goes wrong, which is to say you may as well not have enough food to get by. On top of that, you’re rationing light, which always sets the officers grumbling, and makes everyone a bit jumpy, yourself included. 

Despite all this, you’re finding yourself practically confined to your cabin. You can’t help it. You’ll be standing on the bridge and catch her eyes on you from across the way, raking you up and down like she’s trying to undress you where you stand with her gaze alone. Or you’ll feel a thick hand at your side and shiver when it moves to your thigh. You don’t think she cares enough to even try to be discreet, and honestly, neither do you. It’s worth it for the feeling of the rough fabric of her shirt as you pull her into the cabin and lock the door in one smooth motion. The way her tongue fills up her mouth immediately afterward. The way she pins you to the door, the way you sometimes make it to the bed and sometimes find yourself on your knees with two fingers and a tongue inside her, your face buried in her mound as she shakes against the wall and grabs fistfuls of whatever part of you she can reach. 

Things have gotten even better since you showed her that door in your cabin that you always keep locked. The things Fallen London craftsfolk can do with a little bronze, leather, and some mysterious art that keeps the bronze pliable enough to be pleasurable even in cold climes. Expensive, sure, but perhaps someday you’ll sell them to some other esteemed collector as a treasure. 

The operative word being  _ someday. _

One evening, you’re manning the lights when she sidled up to you, sliding a casual arm around your waist. It’s an oddly romantic gesture, as if you two were happy lovers enjoying a night at a Wolfstack tavern rather than hardened captains at the mercy of the cold zee. 

“What is it?” you grouse, the darkness lapping at your cheek. 

She laughs that clay-toothed laugh you realize, with some surprise, you’ve grown attached to. “Watch yourself, Cap’n.” 

You flick the lights on. It’s good for morale to do that every once in a while. But morale won’t mean anything if you don’t have enough fuel to make it to shore. “What do you want?” 

“What I  _ want _ is my crew alive and an island of gold and a corsair the size of a container barge.” You can see the glim-light glinting off her grin for just a moment before you flick it back off. It’s playful, hungry. “What I’m  _ here _ for is a little more material.” She presses a palm flat against the front of your trousers, making you gasp in anticipation alone.

“Should we? Here?” you ask, already moving your hand to her trousers in response. You feel something hard there. Has she been rummaging through your drawer?

“It’s pitch-black, Cap’n,” she murmurs. Her breath is hot in your ear. What lungs could make it that way? Ones like a furnace, like the center of the Earth? Does she have lungs at all? “It will be for at least another hour,” she continues, “if you’re still conserving fuel. That doesn’t give us all the time in the world, sure, but it could be,” she starts to unlace your trousers, “time enough.”

She’s right, you know she’s right, and even if she’s not you’re so exhausted, so anxious, and so hungry for her that you don’t care. You turn your head to kiss her, her now-familiar salt-clay flavor flooding your senses. She leans into you, pressing your back against the rope that serves as a rail.

“Careful,” you say, “you’ll push me overboard.” 

“I should, shouldn’t I?” You know she’s kidding when she laughs into your neck, softly, then gently bites down. She pushes you so that she’s the one with her torso half dangling over the side, supported only by the rope. You hold onto her for dear life as you kiss, biting her lip as if to secure her with your teeth. Your hands roam eagerly over her body, finding little nooks and crannies, imperfections in the clay, to press into. Whether these are sensitive spots or not you can’t tell, because she’s moaning into your mouth no matter how you touch her.

As you move your hips into her to be closer to her, they find the strap-on she’s wearing. You can feel the metal’s hardness through both of your trousers. She feels you find them and thrusts up into you, the bronze finding home. In spite of yourself, you thrust back. You’re both panting as you shamelessly rub yourself up and down on her cock, in a manner not at all befitting that of a dignified zee-captain. 

She twists her face away from yours to whisper, “quiet,” before kissing you again, more carefully this time, less noisily. Effortlessly, she pushes you away so you’re both standing upright on the deck. You sit down, slide your trousers around your ankles. You feel a single thick finger explore you to make sure that you’re ready. She finds you dripping wet; you’ve been wet since she started kissing you. Despite yourself you let out a soft gasp as she tentatively presses inside you. She starts rubbing your clit in long, slow, teasing motions. You hate the fact that you need to be quiet in case a zailor hears you, but at the same time, you’re made even wetter by the thought of one of your crew walking right by without seeing you in the pitch-black underground.

You reach down to push her hand away, grab her shirt to pull you towards her, and whisper in her ear,  _ “Please.”  _

“I’ll need a bit better than that, Captain.” She almost...giggles? You can’t imagine such a sound coming from the strong, mysterious woman you’ve known. Your trysts have revealed a lot about her.

“Fuck you,” you hiss into her ear. “Please, please please please, just fuck me before we run out of time. If the whole crew goes darkness-mad it’s your faul--” 

You’re cut off by her pulling her face away to slip just the tip of her cock inside you. You moan, and she quickly places a hand over your mouth to stifle the noise, holding it to you gently enough that you can easily push it away if you need to. (She always seems so aware of her own strength. Is she this careful with all her lovers?) “Quiet, remember,” she whispers, and now you really do hear the laughter in her voice. You laugh with her into her hand, and your laugh is cut off by another gasp as she slides herself the rest of the way in. 

“Full?” she teases, and then begins thrusting into you in earnest. The cold metal of the cock always surprises you, as does its alien pliability, so at odds with metal’s usual texture. She moves her hips slowly but meaningfully, filling you with her over and over. The pleasure and pain makes you want to cry aloud, and you bite down on your own lip. 

She starts to move faster and it’s almost more than you can bear. She takes her hand off your mouth to slip it between the two of you, surrounding your clit with two fingers and moving them back and forth. You rock your hips in time with hers until you’re overpowered by the dual sensations of her cock deep inside you and her fingers against your clit, and you come, silently, gnashing your teeth and thrusting yourself up into her.

She pauses, moves her hand away, bends down to whisper in your ear, “More, Captain?”

You nod, realize she can’t see the movement of your head, and simply whisper, “Yes.” 

She grins, and resumes grinding into you. At first she’s slow, again, knowing it’s probably all you can take for now. Your arms grip her waist. Every stroke is agonizingly intense, yet you can’t get enough. As your post-orgasm glow fades, replaced by more arousal, your hips seem to move on their own, rocking faster and faster against her. Her fingers are back with a vengeance, tracing your clit in quick circles as she fucks you. You move your own hand down between you, brushing against her fingers, to respond in kind. She groans then stifles it, probably by biting her lip, and fucks you desperately until you feel her own body shudder and seize. Even then she doesn’t stop. You bring each other over the brink again and again.

When you’re spent, clinging to her body as she trails slow fingers down your back, she says by way of explanation for her sudden hunger, “It’s the anniversary.” 

“The anniversary of what?” 

You look at her, and she doesn’t meet your eyes. “My betrayal. My emancipation. My escape.” 

_ The day she left Polythreme. _ You’re surprised at hearing this; it’s the second time in your entire life you’ve seen her so vulnerable. The first being the night you rescued her. You ask her what happened that day. She lies silent. The two of you hold each other for another minute. “You’ve heard the rumors,” she says. “You’ve read the poetry on my arms, and my breasts. Is that not enough?” 

You think about the timing of your rescue, and ask her what, exactly, she was doing so near the Iron Republic. 

That gets a response from her, finally. “None of your damned business,” she grunts, rolling you off her. (She still rolls you carefully, so as not to hurt you.) “You should turn the light back on. Or I can take over light duty if you want. I won’t tell.” 

You ask again: what happened when she left Polythreme? What was she doing near the Iron Republic?

“Don’t ask me again.” Her voice is a low warning.

You ask once more. 

She stands, spits off the edge of the deck, and you hear her footsteps growing further and further away from you.

You try not to keep secrets on your crew. But maybe you can make an exception, just this once? The deck is cold against your back with her gone. 

You button yourself, mournfully, and just in time; a crewmember sprints towards you, holding a lantern with the tiniest, most pathetic pieces of glim.

“Cap’n,” she says, “land off the starboard bow. We’re less than a day from shore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading!


	4. Panning for Sapphires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A plan is revealed. A proposition is made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to StarSock9 for the beta!

You hardly see an inch of her grey-blue skin until you reach shore. It’s hard to keep away from someone on a ship, but she’s skilled. You see her push past your zailors to slip away, and she’s lost in the chrysanthemum-gold city before you can so much as say “sorry” or “where in Salt’s name have you been?!” or “I should have let the zee swallow you up. I should have seen if water melts dry clay.” 

Or you really want to say, which is “talk to me.” 

You do your business in Port Carnelian, as usual. Rounds of tea in the tea-shop. Asking tigers about the latest. In every crowd you look for her; on the back of every Clay Man’s face you see her, even though you know she’d never go out without her cap, and even if she did her head is covered in a comprehensive latticework of tattoos. You’ve seen them, felt them under the palm of your hand. So you know none of these men hauling big loads of fuel, food, and other goods are her. And yet you look for her all the same. A tall clay man hauling freight gives you a wry grin when he notices you staring, and you know by the gesture that he’s Unfinished. Once, long before you set zail and saw the horrific things you’ve seen, that would frighten you, but now you just tip your hat. You think about asking him if he’s seen anyone like her around, but apparently when she wants to disappear, she disappears. 

You enter the fungal jungle, ostensibly to pan for sapphires, really to find her. The sunless heat is oppressive and strange, and you’re not even sure what you’re looking for as you cut through the mushroomy “leaves,” really just caps thriving in this hot, moist darkness. Footprints, maybe? Any sign of flight? It’s long work, and you spit on the ground. Whatever you were looking for, you don’t find. 

And your crew wants to know why you’ve been here so long. You never give them this much time for shore leave anywhere but London; it’s too dangerous and too expensive, and you don’t like everyone’s hard-earned wages going to waste in bars and inns and gambling-parlors. There’s rumbling about you going soft. 

Finally, you give up. If she’s ever going to leave this place--maybe she already has, of course--it won’t be on your ship. You make plans for a departure the next day, sending out word on the docks that you’re looking for more crew to accompany you in the morning, a last-ditch way to let her know where you’re going, in case she’s at all interested in finding you again. The plans made, the time of departure set, you settle in for a nice jasmine-tea-two-sugars-plenty-of-milk yes-I-know-it’s-supposed-to-be-taken-without-milk, and take a long swig, sitting alone at your table. 

“I was there for revolution, Captain.” 

You jump.

It’s her. Of course it’s her. Just as you’d given up all hope searching for her, she’s right behind you in the tea shop. She blends in with the tigers surprisingly well; she should stick out like a sore thumb, but between her impeccable blue suit  _ (she has a suit?! did she nick some sapphires and buy it here?)  _ and her almost regal bearing in this place, she looks like she belongs. Her voice is low and would be almost sultry, but what she’s discussing, continuing your conversation from when you last touched her half-naked in the pitch-black of the boat, is anything but. 

“How long have you been--did you follow me here?” you sputter. 

“Come outside with me.” She uses the same tone of voice you use to give your crew an order. You follow obediently.

As soon as you’re in the back alley behind the tea shop she presses a frenzied kiss to your lips. You’re surprised; the gesture seems so out of place after she disappeared. You want to scream at her, and you want her to apologize, and you desperately, desperately want to know why she’s back. But your body tells you not to argue, so you match her eagerness with your own. She pulls out of the kiss to whisper in your ear. 

“This city is crawling with spies,” she tells you, and presses her lips to your jaw. “This is as good a place to talk as any, but we still have to,” her hand finds the back of your thigh, explores, “pretend we’re discussing something else.”   
As tempting as this is, you think she probably has something important to say. “Let’s head back to the ship,” you murmur in her ear, before lightly sucking on it, then pulling away.

She laughs as if you’re the most entertaining lover in the world. She kisses you again, more slowly this time, like she’s kissing you goodbye. “You might not want me on your ship when I’m done explaining myself.” 

“I don’t think there’s much to explain,” you say. You pull her closer, let your fingertips trail up and down her arms. Anyone watching wouldn’t be able to hear you whisper in her ear, and would think your movements to confirm that you two really were just irresponsible maidens whispering words of love into one another’s ear. Or perhaps irresponsible chaps; you’re both pretty androgynous. “I know you wanted to plot with the anarchists, or steal from them, or  _ something, _ ” you continue. “I know it probably extends beyond just Polythreme--” 

“Polythreme?” She laughs, a real laugh. “I was going. We were going. To set London on fire.” 

You want to take a step back and process what you’re hearing. You can’t, of course. You force a laugh like she’s just whispered something delightful in your ear. 

“Why?!” is all you can muster. 

She presses her lips to yours softly, pulls away. “Will you let me tell you on the ship?”

You’re a citizen of London. A...well, certainly not an upstanding one, but a citizen nonetheless. She’s threatening your home, the center of your world, your livelihood and the townhouse you want to retire to when she’s done. How could she side against it? 

But you have to answer her. You have to hear more. “Yes,” you gasp, barely getting the words out.

“Swear by Salt you won’t kill me?” 

You pause, too long, long enough that she can tell you’re considering. “Yes,” you finally breathe. An oath sworn by Salt is the most binding one a zailor can make. Break it, and all the mutersalt in the world can’t save you. 

You didn’t promise not to imprison her, or throw her off your ship forever, though. 

The Pirate-Poet takes your hand as you walk back to the ship. She lets you absorb the shock in silence, filling the space between you with slow, one-sided talk about trade routes and wind conditions. She glances around as you step onboard the decks, maybe afraid you’ll throw her in the brig, but there’s absolutely no one else there but the two of you; everyone else is enjoying an extended shore leave.

You lock the doors to your cabin tightly, and ask, sounding calmer than you feel, “The whole city?” 

She closes her eyes and sighs deeply. 

“Captain, the anarchists have it right,” she says, shrugging off her deep blue jacket. “Always have had it right. Without London, there’s no trade in Clay Men. We’re free to remain Unfinished,  _ liberated.”  _ Impassioned tears spring to her eyes. “I can’t slay the King who cursed us to live in the first place, I can’t free every wretched animate in Polythreme. But I can free us. My people. No longer will we need to choose between a hellish life in Polythreme and one of servitude to Londoners. And no longer will that choice be made  _ for  _ us.” 

You stare at her for a few moments.  _ Free to remain Unfinished, _ you think, and think of the space carved out of the back of her head. The chipped and cracked places on her body you love to kiss and caress. You shake yourself back to reality. “You’d be hurting innocents,” you say. “Children.” 

She holds up her hands defensively. “I’m not setting the Flit on fire, Captain,” she says, and you wonder how she knows the Flit exists. Been doing her research, evidently. Research for the purpose of destroying everything in the safety of your home, setting it ablaze. The thought terrifies you. “I’m strategic,” she continues. “A few offices here and there holding certain economic records, certain indentured-servitude clauses. The anarchists, I hoped, could take care of the rest--they’d know what else to burn. I know they’re not keen on hurting innocents either.” She smiles wryly. “I thought I’d be a great asset. It doesn’t matter, now, though, does it? I doubt I’ll ever have a ship strong enough to make it into the Iron Republic’s harbor, and I have no crew behind me anymore. So you can take your hand off your sword.”

You didn’t even realize you were gripping its hilt, and toss it to the floor. “I don’t want to hurt you.” You pause. “Why are you telling me this?” you ask. “Treason’s one thing, but arson…” There are a few people you care for back in London. You should warn them. Or throw her in the brig. Or strike her down right here, and she knows it. She has no bloody business trusting you. 

So why don’t you? Why did you toss your sword aside instead of bringing it to her throat? 

“Because,” she says quietly, answering the questions you didn’t speak aloud as much as she’s answering the ones you did, “captain, I think a part of you wants to join me.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twitter: Coeurire   
> Tumblr: mothbutterfly 
> 
> Thanks everyone for being so patient with me! I think we've got about two more chapters coming down the pipeline, possibly more. 
> 
> As always, thank you for your kudos and comments. They really mean a lot.


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